MY SHORT AND SIMPLE STORY

It took me years of efforts (not to mention the risk involved) to bring our family from Ukraine to Canada in 1995. We didn’t know anybody in North America, were short of money and practically without profession. Really, who needed a journalist and an engineer with broken English?

Fortunately, we didn’t understand at that time how bad our language was (we started to learn it from scratch at age 40). It would have discouraged us a lot! Another good thing NOT TO KNOW was about a break-in in our apartment just after the first few weeks in Canada.

This break-in left us without money (yes, we kept it in cash because hadn’t opened bank account yet), most belongings and worst of all - without any documents to prove who we were and what we were doing in Canada.

What did we do? Nothing unusual, the solution was very simple. We just worked: teenager sons - after school hours, and my wife and me - before English night classes. It’s not a true that a job is hard to find. We didn’t have any problems starting delivering pizza at nighttime and newspapers at dawn. That’s all we had to do – just work… and keep quiet about our University degrees.

In 1997 we moved to Nanaimo, touched by the beauty of this city and… affordable housing. The house we eventually bought was the first not just in our life, but also in the lives of generations of our family. (You know, we lived in the Soviet Union!)

Then I worked on a used car lot, learned this trade (or maybe I should call it an art!) and later we bought this business and ran it for 6 years, letting our sons get into University.

All this time we were helping our friends from our old country, from Vancouver, Edmonton, and Toronto to move to Nanaimo and settle in this town.  So the decision to become a Realtor came naturally - why not do the same for other people, only this time for money?

Again, it wasn’t hard at all - I just had to work a little bit to pass an English exam, enter and graduate University of BC Real Estate Course and get accepted by the best Real Estate Company on Vancouver Island - RE/MAX of Nanaimo, that’s it!

As you can see, it’s a very simple story. All we did was just work. And you know what? Before, I dreamed to be a millionaire, famous writer or at least a big boss. Not anymore! (especially about being a boss!) All I want now is to be a good realtor. Not “the best of the best”, “ #1”, “Top 2.75%” or anything like that - just a realtor, good enough for only one person - you. I’m working on it.

P.S. You can find some other stories about our life in the USSR and Canada on http://www.victor-k.com/mystories.htm

Yes, it’s in English, which has improved a little bit after these years.